Lying with the Dead (9 page)

Mom refused to understand how scared I was to visit Maury at Patuxent. As a kid, I complained every Sunday how terrified I was of the other cons, their hard-faced wives and girlfriends. The monosyllabic guards who frisked us coming and going didn’t make me feel safer. To the contrary, I was afraid they’d slap me into prison, too, in a cell beside Maury.

Mom swore she’d never let them lock me away. But if she had that power, why was Maury behind bars? And why, after his parole, couldn’t she keep the cops from arresting him on bogus charges every time there was a crime anywhere in the county?

When they first sprung Maury from Patuxent, I was happy for him. At school, though, my classmates taunted me about my jailbird brother and I started to feel that some taint from him attached to me. It didn’t help that Mom told me to ignore them. Just as Candy believed that everybody was staring at her leg, I thought people eyed me with suspicion and distaste.

Then one day in the ninth grade I was cramming for a science quiz when a man barged into the study hall. He wore a denim shirt and jeans spackled with concrete. I took him for someone on the maintenance staff. But he looked me over and barked, “My car’s out back. Let’s go.”

“Where? What for?”

“You’ll find out.”

“I’m not allowed to leave the building during school hours.”

“Aren’t you the scholar.” He grabbed me by the shirt collar and muscled me into the hallway. Students and teachers gawked, but said nothing. When I hesitated, not knowing whether to shout for help or go along quietly, he slammed me against a locker. “Do I have to handcuff you?”

“Who are you? What did I do?”

He flipped open his wallet, flashing a police badge. Then he frog-marched me outside to a squad car. “Climb in.”

“Have you talked to the principal? Do I have permission to leave?”

“Just get in.”

He made me sit in the backseat, caged by steel mesh. My instant reaction was that Maury had been arrested again. “Does this have to do with my brother?”

“I’ll ask the questions. You keep your trap shut.”

We sped down U.S. 1, past body and fender shops and bail bondsmen’s offices, to the County Service Building, a mock colonial bunker that brooded behind wooden pillars. To be driven to the same police station where, I knew from family lore, Maury had been booked for Dad’s murder was the realization of a nightmare. Now you’ve done it, I remember thinking. You’re going to jail. Against all reason, I was sure I had to be guilty of something.

The man hauled me into a squad room. In that stark gray space fizzing with neon light, a teenage girl in a torn blouse sat thumbing through mug shots.

“Is this the guy?” the cop asked her.

She glanced up, her face partially veiled by straight blond hair.

“You said dark hair, about six feet tall, green shirt,” the cop prompted her.

“Is she accusing me of something? I’ve never seen her before.”

“Shut up and let her look at you.”

Her blue eyes sized me up more bluntly than any girl’s ever had. She had cute birdlike features and a mole, like a beauty mark, on her cheek. We were about the same age, and she seemed every bit as scared as I was. It astounded me that she was scared of me or of the person she mistook me for. Even after she murmured, “It’s not him,” I had the sense that she might have said that only out of fear.

“He fits the description,” the cop insisted.

“It was a man in his twenties,” she whispered.

“I’m only fifteen,” I said.

“I want any shit from you, I’ll squeeze your head.”

He hauled me down the corridor to a different room. “Watch this smartass while I talk to a witness.”

A uniformed policeman stood guard beside an immense naked man who lay handcuffed to a table. Crosshatched with cuts and scratches, the man displayed no more animation than a hassock that had split a seam. Maybe he was in shock or sedated. He didn’t let out a whimper as a paramedic swathed him with alcohol.

“A fucking mess, ain’t he?” the policeman said. “He robbed the wrong guys at a pool hall, and they tossed him through a plate glass window. He didn’t have so much lard on him, he’d probably be dead.”

The cop in the spattered jeans came and led me back to the girl. “Take a second look,” he said. “Take as long as you need. Age aside, could it be him?”

“No. He’s not the one. I’m positive.”

“Okey-dokey. Sit tight while I drop Mister Blabbermouth back at school.”

As we left the County Service Building, a man called out, “How’s it hanging, Gil?”

“Like a hammer.”

In the squad car, he didn’t apologize, but he let me sit up front and explained about the girl. “A guy jumped her and grabbed her tits. She broke away before he did worse.”

“And you blamed me?” In four short years I had gone from having a man’s hand down my pants to being suspected of sexual assault. How could I not feel tainted?

“You fit the description.”

“She told you it was a man in his twenties. Why search in a school?”

“A hunch. No harm done.”

“Not to you. What am I supposed to tell my teacher?”

“Tell him you talk too damn much.” He leaned over and flung open the door on my side.

Normally I wouldn’t have confided in a soul, no more than I had confessed to anybody before Dr. Rokoko about the creep in the woods. Ashamed and angry, I wanted to punish the cop—and at the same time I was afraid of being punished. If Mom found out, she was sure to flare up as quick as a kitchen match, not caring who got burned. Still, people had seen me dragged out of school and driven off in a squad car. I couldn’t hide what had happened.

My science teacher sent me to the office. There the principal listened to my story, then despite my abject begging that he not tell Mom, he said he had no choice. He phoned her straightaway, and I resigned myself to being beaten.

That evening at home, however, she caught me by surprise and was furious at the police, not at me. Next day she called in sick at Safeway and made me come with her to the County Service Building, fuming the whole time about false arrest.

Mother Courage. That was another role she gloried in. Whenever she wasn’t playing Mother Discourage or Medea or Blanche Dubois, she was a defender of underdogs, a pugnacious righter of wrongs, a fearless protector of her family. That these campaigns frequently ended in losing battles didn’t deter Mom. All that mattered at the moment was settling a score.

With her silver hair helmeted in a page-boy style, she marched off to war in a pair of pedal pushers and a man’s shirt hanging loose at her hips. Yet no pinstriped state’s attorney or swaggering sleek-suited defense lawyer commanded quicker attention. She demanded to speak to the chief of police and promptly got her wish.

A florid fellow, short-armed and thick-necked, the chief wore a starched white shirt that creaked like a bulletproof vest. In bemusement, he listened to Mom lay out her bill of charges, then inquired mildly, “Did your son notice the name and badge number of the alleged officer in this alleged incident?”

“Gil,” I said. “His name was Gil. I saw his badge but not the number.”

The chief lazily swung his eyes over to me. “What’s Gil’s last name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you describe him?”

“He’s heavy-set and wore work clothes. You know, blue jeans.”

“Well, that gives us something to go on. We have an officer named Gil.” He instructed his secretary to call Officer Conroy.

Then the three of us waited in awkward silence. Awkward for me, that is. It’s hard to remember what I feared more. That the chief would humiliate Mom, and then she’d take it out on me? Or that somehow they’d both turn against me?

The chief didn’t appear to feel any stress. Not bothering to straighten the papers on his desk or lighten the atmosphere with chitchat, he stared at Mom, and she locked her belligerent gaze on him.

Gil arrived in uniform, carrying a visored cap under one arm as though it were a serving tray. When the chief summarized Mom’s complaints, Gil said, “Gee, I don’t get it. I’ve never seen this boy before in my life. And what she accuses me of doing violates our procedures. We’re trained to treat juveniles with kid gloves.”

“That’s a lie,” Mom said. “I know damn well what you do to juveniles.”

Petrified that she’d mention Maury—how would it help to tell them her older son was a convicted killer?—I broke in. “He put me in a room with the girl and pressured her to identify me. He prejudged—he prejudiced me.”

“What do we have here?” the chief asked. “A Philadelphia lawyer?”

“He’s smart and he tells the truth,” Mom said.

“I believe my men are smart and tell the truth, too,” the chief said.

“There were witnesses,” I said. “Kids at my school. The girl.”

Ignoring me, the chief asked Mom, “What am I supposed to do, ma’am? It’s your boy’s word against a police veteran of … how many years, Gil?”

“Eighteen years.”

“He’s been on the force longer than your son’s been on earth. Under the circumstances, what can I do?”

“Fire him,” Mom flung back.

“Afraid I’m not going to do that on the say-so of a kid. Of course, if you care to file a formal complaint—”

“That’s what I’m doing now. Complaining.”

“—you’ll need to write a letter and submit it to the review board.”

“Why should I believe I’ll do better with a letter than talking to you?”

“That’s your choice, ma’am. Now I’ve got things to tend to.”

“Me too,” Mom shouted. “I’m missing work. I’m being docked a day’s pay. I’ve spent half my life fighting courts and parole boards. What do you have to do to get justice in this state?”

The chief signaled that Gil should go. Then he stood up, dismissing us. But Mom wouldn’t leave. And with a fascination that verged on horror, I watched her veer off into self-immolating anger. It came to me then, not for the first time and certainly not the last, that in my childhood calculus of fear this was what I dreaded most—Mom’s meltdowns.

Nostrils spread, voice lowered to a menacing register, she reared back and lambasted the chief. To crack his smug veneer and leave him with a scar to remember her by, she called him a coward. She accused him of having a backbone as soft as a banana, and she doubted how hard the rest of him was.

She wasn’t doing this for me, I knew. It answered some deep need of hers. If it all ended in tears, in bloodshed or even a jail sentence, that was a price she was willing to pay. She’d have piled abuse on him for hours had the chief not sauntered from behind his desk and out of the room. The two of us were reduced to silence again. Then there was nothing to do except skulk down the hall to the exit.

On the ride home, terrified that I’d become her next target, I talked to protect myself. I talked to calm my nerves. I thanked her for defending me. I told her I loved her and was proud of her. But as I gibbered away and watched her hands and prayed they’d stay fastened to the steering wheel, I recognized that for all her brave standing up to authority Mom was … was wrong in the head. That was the politest way of putting it. And it was the hardest thing for me to accept. It’s hard even today to acknowledge that the woman whose love and approval I craved, and who seemed to me, then as now, remarkable in so many respects, is clinically disturbed and dangerous. I didn’t know how to deal with it back then. I don’t know now.

At 4 p.m., darkness drops over London like a stage curtain. Some people find the early winter nightfall profoundly depressing. I regard it as a good excuse to pour a drink. Back in my conservatory, I measure two inches of Irish whiskey into a coffee mug, postpone the call I promised to make to Mom, and memorize the script of what I’ll say.

Then I commence punching numbers—twenty for my discounted long-distance service, followed by the U.S. code, the Maryland area code, and finally the digits of her home phone. After a single ring, I hang up and redial. Since it’s the signal she insists on, you’d expect her to snatch up the receiver the instant the second ring crosses the Atlantic. But no, I have time for a leisurely sip of whiskey. Because of her poor hearing, I suppose, the rings—four, five, six—have to wash over her in vibrating waves before she notices.

“Hello,” Mom warbles as if from the bottom of a dank well.

“It’s Quinn.”

“Where are you? You sound like you’re right in the next room.”

“I’m in London.”

“Is it cold there? It’s cold here,” she says.

“It’s nice and invigorating.” Another sip of whiskey warms my innards. “Candy told me you wanted to talk.”

“What I want to do is talk in person, not over the phone.”

“Good. It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other. I should be in the States sometime this spring. I’ll stop in Maryland.”

“I need to talk to you sooner.” Her voice strengthens in her old habit of command.

“I don’t think that’s possible, Mom. Not with the schedule I have.”

“What are you doing that’s more important than your mother?”

If I were her director, I’d discourage this tonal shift. In one line she’s sad Ophelia drowning; in the next she’s the tyrannical mother ruling with an iron fist over the House of Bernarda Alba. Like the weak tubercular son in
Long Day’s Journey into Night
, I grope for an alibi. “I’ve agreed to write my memoirs. The publisher has me on a tight deadline.”

“That’s wonderful, Quinn.” The truculence evaporates from her voice. “Tell me about it.”

“Not much to tell yet. I’m just starting.”

“I’ll pray for a best seller. Do you need pictures? Candy and I were going through photographs yesterday.”

“It’s not that sort of book.”

“Readers would love to see you as a baby. I hope you don’t dwell on the bad parts. Be positive and write about all your blessings. And don’t be too hard on me. I’m hard enough on myself these days and don’t know how much longer I’ll last.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What seems to be the problem?” With this question I’m uncorking a bottle that could be bottomless. To fortify myself, I pour a second Irish whiskey.

“I remember and I regret …” Mom’s words trail off in what may be a fault in the connection or a bit of internal editing. “I remember, but I don’t regret. I’m afraid I won’t go to heaven unless I clear the decks with you kids.”